The best sales candidates are able to demonstrate their curiosity, coachability and empathy in the interview process. These are three attributes that we see in our most successful Account Executives and here's why they are important. * Curiosity enables sales reps to uncover valuable insights that can inform their sales approach and tailor solutions to meet the customer's specific needs effectively. Their thirst for continuous learning enables sales reps to stay ahead of the curve, competitors and adapt to changes in the market (especially now). * Coachable sales reps are open to feedback, learn from experiences, and are receptive to new ideas and perspectives. They actively seek out opportunities for growth and ask for feedback to enhance their approach. * Empathetic sales reps build trusting relationships, understand customer needs, communicate effectively, and can more easily resolve objections. Through Gong we are able to track when Account Executives demonstrate empathy and those reps with high levels of empathy are almost always at the top of the leaderboard.

I really like this question because it's so true! Leadership can break a lot of trust by implementing incorrect KPIs for a segment. Experienced sellers will get angry they are treated like SDRs, etc. The best thing leaders can do is watch, listen, observe, and then replicate. What have the most successful reps done in this position? Are they having 10 calls a week, 2 on-sites a month, and 1 "high value activity" a quarter (like exec intro, hackathon, etc)? Standardize from the top and make excellence the norm.

Sales OKRs should be designed to align with the overall business objectives and drive measurable outcomes that contribute to revenue growth and customer success. Here are some examples of good sales OKRs: 1. Objective: Increase Revenue * Key Result 1: Achieve a 20% increase in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the quarter. * Key Result 2: Close 50 new deals with high-value clients within the target market. * Key Result 3: Increase average deal size by 15% through upselling and cross-selling additional products or services. 2. Objective: Expand Market Reach * Key Result 1: Enter three new geographic markets and generate $100,000 in revenue from each market within six months. * Key Result 2: Increase brand awareness and market visibility by doubling the number of qualified leads generated from inbound marketing efforts. * Key Result 3: Secure partnerships with five strategic channel partners to extend the company's reach and access new customer segments. 3. Objective: Improve Sales Efficiency * Key Result 1: Reduce the sales cycle length by 20% through process optimization and improved lead qualification. * Key Result 2: Increase the conversion rate from qualified leads to closed deals by 15% through targeted sales enablement and training initiatives. * Key Result 3: Implement a new CRM system and achieve 100% adoption among the sales team within three months to improve data accuracy and visibility. 4. Objective: Enhance Customer Satisfaction * Key Result 1: Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 9 or above by the end of the year through proactive customer engagement and support. * Key Result 2: Reduce customer churn rate by 25% through proactive account management and retention efforts. * Key Result 3: Increase customer lifetime value (CLV) by 20% by driving upsell and cross-sell opportunities and delivering exceptional value to customers. 5. Objective: Foster Team Development * Key Result 1: Implement a structured onboarding program for new sales hires and achieve 100% completion within 30 days of joining. * Key Result 2: Provide ongoing training and development opportunities for the sales team, resulting in a 10% increase in average performance metrics (e.g., conversion rate, quota attainment). * Key Result 3: Foster a culture of collaboration and accountability within the sales team, as measured by a 15% increase in team satisfaction scores. These examples illustrate how sales OKRs can be structured to align with broader business goals and drive measurable outcomes that contribute to revenue growth, market expansion, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and team development. Each OKR should be ambitious yet achievable, with clear metrics and milestones to track progress and success.

My two favorite technique to use when you believe a client may not be telling you the whole story is: 1) Humbling disclaimer - you can disarm a prospect who may be withholding information by humanizing the conversation and providing a humorous, self-deprecating "humbling disclaimer". This could sound like, “I’m sorry, but I must need another cup of coffee, because I just don’t get it, can you help me understand why that may be the case?” 2) Suggestive discovery - normalize the situation or state, and then asking a question informed by your perspective to probe deeper to get to the truth. That could sound like, “Got it, typically I’ve observed when other clients…it’s because of…to what extent would you say that is what is going on here?” With those two tactics, you can usually get to the truth of what may be happening.

Excellent revenue leaders turn into outstanding revenue leaders based on how and who they hire. Your number one job as a leader is to hire the right people, followed by supporting them. If you only hire A+ talent, your team will only need you for strategy vs. blocking/tackling personnel and process issues. Some things to consider: 1. Define the sales culture: 1. Talent density: Slow down to speed up. We only hire A+ talent. Those who embody the innate skillsets that are difficult to teach (i.e. humility, hustle, high IQ/EQ, curiosity, relentlessness) 1. Create a robust recruitment process to ensure you don’t deviate from top-tier talent. Great books to reference: Who & No Rules Rules 2. Crystal clear on your mission, vision, values, and the importance of maintaining a strong culture especially at the age of our business. 3. What are the skillsets and behaviors of your top performers today? You use the current examples of what you have to help define what sales excellence means to your business. 4. Create revenue incentives to drive the right behavior (i.e. AE & CS comped off expansion so they can work together to drive customer outcomes) 5. Recognize and reward top talent, while also celebrating the struggles and failures in order to learn and grow 2. Define and create a revenue motion: 1. Define clear roles & responsibilities for all revenue 2. Define clear KPIs, both shared and individual 1. Expectation setting on performance/winning culture 2. Performance management. Make tough decisions early and often 3. Create and constantly iterate a revenue playbook in order to drive repeatability in our motion and forecast 4. Leverage data to gain insights into sales performance, customer behavior, patterns of successes/failures, and leverage leading indicators to guide decision making 3. Establish virtuous revenue training: 1. Clearly defined onboarding program to reduce time to ramp. Learn from your previous new hires. Every new hire should help iterate the onboarding playbook for the next round of hires 2. Continuous call reviews to ensure our ICs are following your sales methodology. MEDDPICC can be fairly outdated. I recommend building a model from several methodologies that get your GTM team to understand customer use cases, challenges, desired outcomes, how to solution sell vs. feature sell, key risks within deals, executive alignment, multi-threading, etc. 1. Custom training dependent on findings (i.e. value selling, objection handling, negotiation, competitive positioning, etc.) 3. Foster collaboration, problem solving, sharing best practice 4. Sell 90 initiative: ICs spending 90% of their time with the customer. This means we remove all internal inefficiencies. 1. Technology overhaul: What’s working, what’s not? 4. "We are customer obsessed": 1. Customer-first mindset. Maniacally focused on value selling, understanding pain, providing solutions, and making your customers' lives easier. 2. "We pride ourselves on building long-term relationships" 3. "We don’t put the competition down, we’re trusted advisors and know our competitors gaps inside and out"

* Demonstrate an absolute commitment to solving problems for your customers and do it even when it feels like no one is watching. People are always talking and sharing examples of great. * When you've done your research and put in the work, shine a light on it by asking execs to weigh in or get involved. Too many try to run and hide from this but there is no faster path forward than to have your work critiqued, making clear your commitment to solve problems especially when you didn't have it right the first time around. * Ask for the time. It's much harder to see what is not in front of you. If you want to be seen, ask.

I've been at HubSpot for 14 years. Every year I ask myself the same questions: -Do I enjoy the people I work with? -Am I continuously progressing my career and growing my earnings potential? -Are there new and difficult challenges that stretch me and push me to develop new skills? -Am I fulfilled by the work I do? If all the above are yes, I stay in the role. So far, I've been very fortunate to have a great career at HubSpot. When evaluating new companies, I would recommend a few things for folks to evaluate. First off - life stage and relative risk tolerance can be important to think through. If you are early in your career, have a larger appetite for risk, and are willing to risk a "bad bounce," early stage companies are higher risk / higher reward. If you are later in your career and desire more stability, have family earnings obligations, or just want lower risk in general, later stage companies are the right move. Once you've established stage, I like to think about the intersection of your experience and what you are passionate about. Sit down and write a list of industries / areas that get you excited, then also write where you have experience and knowledge. Often where you overlap is a great place to start. Next, I'd make a target list of companies. Companies that have happy customers (in tech you can see customer reviews at G2crowd, trustradius, or other industry sites,) happy employees (Glassdoor,) and a steady growth rate (look at pace of funding rounds, or read their earnings reports if publicly traded,) are a good bet. I'd suggest solving for growth - mid to high growth companies have many more promotion opportunities and your equity will likely go farther. From there, I'd check linkedin to look for connections in your network that are at one of your target companies. Personally, I'd almost never apply through a job listing, I would always reach out to the connection, ask for 15 minutes to chat about the company, and then ask them to refer you in.

Very interesting question — and one that brings up a few more! * Quota attainment is a KPI that is directly meaningful to a seller—if she can hit her KPI of quota attainment year after year, that will be meaningful to her personally! * However, quota attainment isn’t a helpful KPI to the company by itself — we could find out that the above seller is selling bad deals — selling deals that have low margins, high churn rates, and more… This is why it’s important to have a several KPIs that are developed to the needs of the business—and to the needs of the seller. Otherwise, it’s like judging someone’s safe driving ability solely by whether or not they drive the speed limit. Many people drive the speed limit, but are looking at their phone, or are ignoring their turn signals, etc. It’s one KPI that will help inform whether a driver is safe, but it’s not the only way of determining whether a driver is safe.

Consistently reviewing and analyzing KPIs can be crucial in helping your sales team adapt to change. For example, if you are moving in to a new market the KPIs will not look the same as the sales KPIs from an established market. Momentum will develop over time. Adding rigor around the need for ongoing KPI analysis is an effective way to help your reps pivot and adapt on a regular basis and will help your reps become more successful in changing markets. In return this will mean they become more realistic when it comes to forecasting the potential of an opportunity, as they will better understand when an opportunity will close based on the appetite of the market at that time.

Great question - I think it is just as important to 'disqualify' deals than it is to 'qualify' them in - this allows you to focus on deals that have the greatest opportunity to close. Of course, in order to tell whether you should move on, or dig into a deal, you should consider these factors: • Level of Prospect Engagement – If the prospect is still engaging but seems to be moving without urgency, I would suggest you keep nurturing the opportunity. • Compelling Events – If they have a compelling business reason/event, that includes a clear timeline or internal blocker (e.g., budget cycle, internal approvals), keep it open and set a follow-up plan that includes customer stories that demonstrate an understanding of how you have helped companies solve similar challenges. • Lack of Urgency or Fit – If they’re unresponsive or don’t see enough value right now, close-lost it and have SDR requalify later.